Faster Scrolling in Word

Do you have an MS Word document that’s completely full of graphics? Hate the extra time it takes to scroll through a document like that? Would you like Word to work a little faster with the document for you?

If you’ve answered, “Yes, yes and yes,” here’s a quick trick to help with the slowdown that all the extra pictures tend to cause.

Word has the ability to use something called a Picture Placeholder in your documents, displaying only an empty box where the picture belongs. When you use the Print Preview feature, you’ll see the pictures. When you print your document, you’ll see the pictures. But, when you edit your document, you’ll only see an empty frame where your picture will be.

By doing that, your system doesn’t have to use the memory and time to load up the pictures. It’s only working with an empty frame, so the scrolling speed during your editing will increase, saving you time and frustration!

Ready to learn the “how to” of this? I thought you might be, so let’s get to it!

In older versions of MS Word, Picture Placeholders can be found on the Tools menu, Options choice, View tab.

In Word 2007, you’ll need to use the Office Button to get to the Word Options button.

Once you’re in the Options dialogue window, you need to go to Advanced options and scroll down to the Show document content section.

In any version, you need to locate and check the option for Picture Placeholders and then click OK.

That’s it. You should find that you’re now able to zoom, zoom, zoom when you scroll!